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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1087 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 8, 2025

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Anyone know any games, roleplaying or otherwise, which end up encouraging real/historical tactics? Or generalize those tactics to the magic or tech or whatever makes the setting unique.

I was playing D:OS2 this weekend and found myself thinking, "wow, all these spear-wielding magisters have zero incentive to form up and fight in ranks." It's a chaotic free-for-all.

I think you should try Myth II: Soulblighter. It's a real-time tactics game where the multiplayer really shows how it can shine with regards to troop placement and management. I think the multiplayer community eventually settled on the best formation for melee being all of them packed in shoulder-to-shoulder, though.

Wait - do you get a lot of melee-only battles in Myth II? I only recall playing the first game, and that was a quarter century ago, but I vaguely recall there being enough ranged area-of-effect attacks (dwarf molotov cocktails, some fireball and lightning magics, an exploding suicide unit) that you had to keep your units spread out more often than not.

I do remember our Myth I multiplayer games getting up to some very weird tricks, though. Like: you'd have a dwarf throw a bomb, and then you'd quickly hit the ground below the airborne bomb with another unit's lightning, and the shock would accelerate the bomb high into the air and let it hit units practically on the other side of the map. We may have been evolving our tactics for Rule of Cool rather than for maximum victory rate, now that I think about it.

Myth TFL had some physics that made the multiplayer fun and broken, yes. The fetch lightning propelling the dwarf bombs sounds like a lot of people did it. Unfortunately, it is not present in Myth II. Generally, you have to keep the AoE guys away from the melee guys, yes. You frequently see melee dudes mopping up other melee dudes though.

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